4 Chapter 4: Year One

During the first year of his training, Josh focused on his body and his devil fruit.

"I need to find some shelter first", mused the 17 year old. It was true. He needed a shelter or a base of operation before he can do anything else.

Josh walked around the island. He started with the inner parts as he was more likely to find some sort of cave he could use for shelter.

Walking around the island, he saw trees around 10-15 meters. They were the stereotypical trees that you would find anywhere else. The land was mostly flat surfaced but one could find a hill here and there.

The animals that he has come across so far are birds, insects, boars, deers, lions, wolves, and he even saw a bear from behind a tree that he was hiding on.

Josh would never admit it but he was scared shitless when he first spotted the pack of lions, wolves and the bear. They were bigger than the Earth's animals but not as big as elephants.

Luckily for him, he was far away enough to not be noticed and he waited quietly for them to pass. Josh was too weak right now to duke it out with them because he hasn't even started his training yet.

When the blonde reached the center of the island, he saw a tree that was significantly bigger and taller than the rest.

This tree was about 25 meters in height and it would take 5 grown men to envelop it with their hands stretched out.

Joshua decided that he could make a shelter on this tree because it seemed to be the safest place on the island.

A blond teenager was comically struggling to climb up a giant tree in the middle of an uninhabited island.

This struggling youth was none other than Josh. Our favorite protagonist had spotted a hole wide enough for him to fit in. This hole was about 5 meters above the ground.

After his intense struggle, Josh finally reached the branch that lead to the natural hole in the tree. It was as if nature herself had blessed Josh to find his shelter so quickly.

Inside the hole was dry and roomy enough for him to lay down and even stretch.

"Perfect! I can use this for shelter. Hopefully, nobody else was using this before me." Josh was right, although it was the perfect shelter, strangely enough, no animals on the island used it for shelter much to Josh's joy.

Our mc ate some of the fruits and berries that he picked up along his trek to find shelter. Fortunately for him, none of them were poisonous. He plopped himself down and went to sleep because the sun was going down.

The following few months, Josh would wake up, exercise his body to the extreme, try using his devil fruit powers, find some food, go back to sleep when the sun went down, and repeat.

This way, none of the animals on the island were a match for a certain 17 year old any longer.

His exercise consists of as much push ups and sit ups as he can, followed by running around the tree until he collapsed.

At first, he could barely do up to 50 sets of each and running for any longer than 15 minutes would leave him gasping for air for a long time.

Much to Josh's joy, his fatigue and exhaustion would disappear after a good night's rest and he could mysteriously do double what he did the day before.

He soon found out that doing push ups, sit ups, and running were taking way too much time so he settled with carrying around tree logs and lugging around boulders.

For his devil fruit, Josh first sat down and concentrated very hard. Soon, he could feel some sort of energy within himself and trying to move it around or bring it out was very taxing and energy draining.

The first time he tried that, he almost collapsed from fatigue.

Josh slowly got used to moving around the energy and bringing it out or even controlling his element from an outside force.

One day, there was a giant thunder storm outside and dark clouds were all that one could see for miles.

This particular storm was bad enough that one might suspect that they were on the grandline.

Josh hurriedly rushed towards his temporary home in fear of catching a cold from the weather.

As he was moving towards his shelter, so was a lightning strike. It struck directly at Josh's head and he freaked out.

After a moment, he found out that not only does the lightning not hurt him, it energized him. He felt that he had this unspoken bond with the lightning and thunder.

When he instinctively raised his hands to the sky and pulled on an imaginary energy, lightning once struck at his position again. That was when he found out that he could direct and control lightning outside of his own source.

As he was mesmerized by the feeling of empowerment from an external source of lightning, a thundercloud drifted down from the heavens and landed near Josh.

"I suddenly feel like Goku from Dragon Ball." Deadpanned Josh. This thundercloud was tangible and he could ride and store things in it.

The blonde experimented with the thundercloud for a few days. Testing the things it could do. He found that it could store things inside it but once there was too many stuff, it would expand and the speed at which it could travel would slow down due to the weight. He could also summon and dismiss it at will.

At one point, Josh shoved as many trees and boulders he could find inside it and after about 50 tons of weight, everything was spat out like a bad dish.

Although the thundercloud was black in color and looked dangerously close to raining down thunder, not to mention ominous, Josh decided to name it the Flying Nimbus.

"I might as well go full in and give it the same name", Josh mused. He figured that he could sit on it and send his lightning through to create a hail of thunder down on his enemies.

Josh spent the rest of the year fighting beasts to gain some semblance to combat experience and continued with his devil fruit and body training along with exploring the rest of the island.